PM: At about one o'clock this morning in Copenhagen, after seventeen hours straight of negotiation today, we agreed on a Copenhagen Accord on climate change. This was agreed in a negotiating group of about twenty five nations. Australia has been in that negotiating group from the beginning of these negotiations. This last round of negotiations with that group began at 11pm last night. It ran through to three this morning, with myself in attendance, and then Penny Wong remained through the night. I resumed at 8am this morning and we have just concluded at 1am the next day. It has been a long day.
This Copenhagen Accord will now be submitted to the conference of parties for approval. This Copenhagen Accord is a significant global agreement on climate change action. It is the first global agreement on climate change action between rich countries and poor countries. This is the first time that rich countries and poor countries have agreed that we should keep our temperature increases within two degrees Celsius. This is the first time that both rich countries and poor countries have both agreed on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is the first time that there is agreement between rich countries and poor countries on international verification mechanisms on actions taken.
And this is the first time that we have an agreement between rich countries and poor countries on the finance necessary to support mitigation efforts, the adaptation efforts of the most vulnerable countries of the world. Much more remains to be done. Much more work is still to be done, and we'll be putting our shoulder to the wheel to make sure that work is done. The next conference of the parties will be held in Mexico, and that'll be during the course of 2010 at a date to be determined. And there is much work to be done in taking this Copenhagen Accord through to its conclusion in a final treaty arrangement.
The truth is, as of twenty four hours ago, these negotiations stood at a point of complete collapse. The difference between the parties was huge, and huge on a number of significant policy disagreements. However, through the negotiating efforts of a large number of countries and their leaders and their representatives- and I've got to say in particular the overnight session led by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong- we were able to narrow those areas of disagreement, and as I said, at one o'clock this morning, we finally concluded these arrangements. Again, subject to the Copenhagen Accord being presented to the conference of parties, which I understand will occur later this morning in Copenhagen.
This has probably been the toughest set of negotiations that I've been involved in. Penny has been through this perhaps a little bit more intensely than I have in the past. To have been upfront and personal with such a range of deeply held policy views from different countries which threatened to collapse the entire show was a difficult time for us all, but we have worked our way through this. The final thing I'd say before taking your questions is this- this is an important agreement on climate change action for Australia. Australia is among the hottest and driest continents on earth, where the effects of climate change are felt first and hardest. Australia, therefore, has a fundamental national interest in obtaining a global agreement on climate change action.
When we look at the next generation of Australian kids, when we look at the challenge for Australian industry for the future, and when we look at the challenge facing our natural environment, including the Great Barrier Reef, for the future, there is no alternative course of action other than global climate change action. This represents a significant global agreement. A huge amount of work still remains to be done. But the alternative, which we confronted, staring into the abyss at midnight last night with these negotiations collapsing altogether and throwing back all progress that has been reached in recent times in global climate change action.
I'm happy now to take your questions.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) What is Australia's national commitment in light of what has been agreed at Copenhagen?
PM: Consistent with a range of countries our commitments still remain within the conditional range of five to twenty five percent reductions. That figure will be finalised and formalised once we have aggregated all of the other conditional commitments when they are registered finally in a schedule attached to this Copenhagen Accord. That will take a period of time ahead. Once that is done what we'll then do is apply, of course, the conditions which we made public in May of this year as to which of the target range that we have put out and will apply in Australia's case. It is not physically possible to do that at this stage, until all the other commitments are translated into schedules and made available either bilaterally or through the multilateral arrangements of this Accord. At that time, we'll make our position absolutely plain on the basis for arriving at it.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, if that's the case, is Tony Abbott right in saying any deal concluded (inaudible)
PM: Can I just say, apart from the change of volume, what's required on climate change is action nationally, and action internationally. Let's just go to the national actions necessary. 34 of 36 of the developed economies represented here at this conference either have or are in the process of developing emissions trading schemes, to give effect to their national targets. Therefore in Australia's case, once our national target is determined, within the range that I've just mentioned, we're going to need a mechanism within Australia to make it work. That's what an Emissions Trading Scheme is. Therefore you ask, why is it necessary? It's absolutely necessary to give effect to the targets which are within the Australian target range, and which will be confirmed in detail once all other nations have reached their schedule attached to this Accord.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, this Copenhagen Grand Bargain (inaudible)
PM: You're right. These negotiations have been exceptionally tough. The attitude taken by various countries in these negotiations has been particularly hardline. As I said, there was a grave risk that these negotiations could collapse altogether, and we would have had a triumph of inaction over action. Instead, we've had a result which underpins action in the four areas that I listed before. That represents substantive progress on where we were.
In terms of the difficulties going forward, you are absolutely right. This was really hard, really, really hard, and will remain that way for the period ahead. But can I say this- any action at home or abroad on climate change is a battle. Because you're dealing with a whole series of interest groups, some of whom don't want to act. And as a result you've got to push your way through. And you need to push your way through on climate change, sometimes step by step. Sometimes there's setbacks, sometimes there's significant steps forward like the type we've had this evening, because it's heading in the right direction, which is national and global action on climate change. And for Australia there is no alternative, as the hottest and driest continent, or among the hottest and driest continents on earth.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister does this actually require the (inaudible)
PM: Well I cannot predict finally and formally what will happen in terms of the operations of COP. You yourself have had some observations of how the conference of parties works. But the reason why the Chair selected a group of twenty five nations, ranging from Sudan to the United States, and with most points in between, was in order to have sufficient capacity to bring constituent groups from within the United Nations family to a point of agreement. As I said, I've just been upfront with you. It's still got to go through the conference of parties, and that will occur in the hours ahead.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well, I think we should simply take each step as it emerges. I have been involved in the business of negotiations long enough to know that it's best simply to take each step as it comes, and I'm simply being cautious in what I say. In terms of the expectations of emerging economies and the developing economies, the clear content of the document you have before me indicates that they themselves must undertake commitments in the future, and that these would be of a definitive nature, and would be registered in appropriate national schedules attached to this Accord as well. Do you want to add to that?
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well can I just say, what we don't have yet is the aggregation of the full developed country list of targets and the full developing countries set of commitments, some of which have only been made as of today. Therefore it's important to put these together, hence my response to the question before asked by Hugh in terms of Australia's landing point on the targets, and that is once we've put together all developed and developing countries targets and commitments and put them together, and then we'll determine of course our own.
Remember our guiding principle- Australia will do no less, no more than the rest of the world. So, let us see what the final aggregation is. What's the big step forward here? For the first time in history, the global community, rich countries and poor countries, have agreed that we should keep temperature increases within two degrees Centigrade. That is the first time that we have agreed as a global community that that should be the case. In the past that's been the subject of resolutions on the part of certain developed economies, and certain large economies, but not across the entire global community through this Copenhagen Accord.
That then dictates the range of actions which flow from it. That's why it's so significant to get a global Accord on a scientific target, because policy actions then proceed. So on the question of the cumulative impact of the targets and commitments by developed and developing countries, we'll know their total effect once they are registered in the schedules attached to the Accord in the months ahead.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, given the official expectations for this conference- given your personal investment in it- are you personally disappointed that we now have agreement in (inaudible)
PM: This Copenhagen Accord will not meet everyone's expectations- that is absolutely true. There will be people who say it doesn't stand up to the test. The test I've applied to it is, what was before, and what was after. What was before was that we've had no global agreement on 2 degrees centigrade. Before, we had no global agreement which for the first time locked developing countries into actions for bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. For the first time what we have done also is have a global agreement between rich and poor countries on international verification systems to make sure that reductions actually occur. And for the first time, we have a global Accord which provides finance for the most vulnerable countries in the world, including in our own region- Tuvalu and Kiribati, those most exposed to inundation, to provide them with immediate access to adaptation finance. So some will say that's not far enough. Our job, as Australia's leaders, and as international leaders, is to yield the best deal possible in these circumstances. As I've said, this represents a significant global agreement on climate change action. The alternative would've been a failure, and as a result providing a triumph of global climate change inaction. We, as I said before, still have a lot of work to do.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
WONG: Well in relation to the last question I think self evidently in the last however many hours it was the Heads of State which enabled the breakthrough. Obviously, as the Prime Minister has said, there's been a restructure of the negotiations. And the arrival of Heads of State was the event which enabled the breakthrough to be made. On the text, which is, as I understand it, there will then be two decisions to be presented to the conference- as well as the Copenhagen Accord in the plenary for consideration, including the category.
PM: On the question of the participation of Heads of Government. Picture this. President Obama arrives. You're in a group of 25, some of which are represented by senior Ministers, and some even by senior officials. Most of us there are being represented by Heads of Government, Heads of State. At an impasse on key points in the agreement I've just described, the President of the United States walks in, rolls up his sleeve and says okay, let's have a go at this, and you make some progress. You don't produce magical results in the next hour and all things are fixed. But let me tell you, each time we had Heads of Government intervene, whether it was the French President or the British Prime Minister, other Heads of Government, including the United States, were able to push this thing forward.
There was a very strong parallel push to see this thing not produce anything, and to collapse the negotiations. We prevailed. Some will be disappointed by the amount of progress. The alternative was, frankly, catastrophic collapse of these negotiations. What we in fact did in part through the strong leadership of the President of the United States, in part through the active negotiations by Heads of Government round a table not much bigger than your average largeish dining room, knocking this thing together. You couldn't really move in that room. It was just full of people and full of paper. But, were they not there, I'd ask you to reflect on where the various conferences of this climate change set of negotiations would've got to since Bali.
When we arrived here we had a vast number of disagreements spread across a several hundred page document. Many, many areas which seemed impossible to resolve. On four key areas I mentioned before, we have achieved genuine progress and a genuine step forward. As I said before, I don't mean to mislead people, there's a huge amount of work still to do.
Over here.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, (inaudible) open up to international scrutiny (inaudible)
PM: We have had a long, long, long negotiation on this question. I'll turn over to Penny on the latest formulation of it. But in terms of the latest interplay of national and international mechanisms we have achieved significant, significant progress. Penny?
WONG: I think in terms of understanding where we got to on the question of reporting and replicating it might be useful for you to consider the final version of the text which is presented to the plenary this evening. It is the case that this was one of the intractable issues in the negotiations, and I think that's been seen from some of the public statements about that. Fundamentally, this comes down to transparency, and making sure we get some sense of what people's emissions add up to.
PM: You see, across the totality of these negotiations, there were many points at which they were on the verge of collapse. One of which was on this very question that you've raised. That's why it was of fundamental importance that President Obama and the Heads of Government of China and India and South Africa and Brazil absented for a period to nut through how that could be breached, how that gap could be closed. And if that didn't occur, that was one of many reasons why these negotiations could've collapsed. But I've got to say, in the last seventeen hours, three, four, five, six, seven times, the negotiations could've collapsed on a whole range of different questions, some of which we haven't fully touched on in these discussions here today.
And each time, as temperatures were raised in the room, we found a way through in order to land a Copenhagen Accord for significant agreements which did not exist prior to this.
Karen.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: I'm not sure that you have the current text of the document, for the simple reason of it only being concluded around 1am. And I think you will find that it does provide for a significant advance on what existed before, and I'll ask the Climate Change Minister to brief you on that one once the documents have been circulated.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well, the negotiations have been really tough, and there have been real obstacles on the way through, from time to time from a number of countries. I don't think it helps in terms of the future process for me to start to provide you with a public checklist of who was constructive and who was not. Can I say in terms of the President of the United States, he was, in my observation- I spoke to him many times during the day- and he worked with me on many of the negotiated outcomes contained within the document, that he was an overwhelmingly constructive and positive force.
Just picture this again. The President of the United States sitting down around the table, twenty five of us, some from countries not even represented at Ministerial level, sleeves rolled up, working on text and working on documents. That shows, I think, a high degree of commitment. That's constructive. That's good. That's trying to get a result. That's the sort of stuff that climate change needs, as opposed to people engaging in grand rhetorical flourishes. This is a tough business. Whether it's climate change action at home or abroad, it's a tough business, there's a lot of resistance. There's a lot of resistance to change. It is absolutely right for Australia's national interest that we get this work done. That's why we've been at it so long.
Over here.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, did you know (inaudible)
PM: I was working very closely with President Obama's advisers in the lead-up to that, during it, and subsequent to it. I don't intend to give you a blow-by-blow on each one of the problem areas during the course of the last twenty four hours. I can't remember now, frankly. There are a lot of them. But as I said, in terms of the particular outcome of transparency was a matter primarily between the Chinese and the Americans and one or two other countries, and other Heads of Government, including the French President, the British Prime Minister, myself, the German Chancellor- of course, allowing those countries to settle that matter between them.
As I said, in the lead-up to it, and during it, and subsequent to it, I was spending quite a lot of time, as with my advisers, with the President's advisers- and that is part of the practical action of getting things done.
Over here.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, over the last few days (inaudible) we must act now for our children, and our children's children. Do you believe that this document you have (inaudible) temperature rises of two degrees?
PM: As far as temperature rises go, this is the first time the global community has agreed in an international agreement that we should keep temperature rises within two degrees Centigrade. Up until now, this has not been universally entrenched. We couldn't make, if you like, really substantial progress until you've had the rich countries, the poor countries, through a document called the Copenhagen Accord which says this is our resolve. As I said, the actions that flow from that, for developed and developing countries, you'll see the colour of people's money when the individual targets and commitments are reflected in the schedule which will be attached to the Accord.
What has driven me and Penny and so many other Heads of Government Ministers at this conference is not to throw your hands up in horror, not to give up in despair, but to push ahead. And it's tough going. If you could wave a magic wand and just wave away the resistance of various countries for action, well that'd be terrific. It just doesn't happen that way. You've actually got to push through, you've got to push hard, you've got to use every bit of negotiating skill that you've got, every diplomatic skill, every bit of horse-trading that you've got, in order to make a difference.
And when it comes to the four key areas of difference which I referred to before in this Copenhagen Accord on climate change action, they represent a significant agreement, much, much work remains to be done.
Over here.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: On the question of the future of Copenhagen or the future of the climate change negotiating process, the next conference of the parties will be hosted by Mexico. I've had a lot of discussions today with Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, as to how he would conduct those negotiations. Building on the my response to the earlier question, these have been tough as hell, and to Mark's earlier question, the next one will be as tough as hell as well as we try to produce a final outcome.
And President Calderon is yet to determine the precise timing of the next conference of the parties- whether it's going to be mid-year, or later in the year. And that's a matter which he, as host, will settle with the United Nations.
On the question of the global target, the resolve of the meeting on a consensus basis that once you had entrenched for the first time a 2 degree Centigrade agreed target for the world, that actions, that is, greenhouse gas reductions and the quantity of them flowed from that temperature target. As I said, you'll be able to aggregate the quantums of those once you've got the schedule of actions and commitments by developed and developing countries once they are included in the schedule.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: The intention to deliver a legally binding treaty is alive within most of us engaged in this process. It is not excluded by the document that you have before you. And when it comes to the language contained in the document concerning the responsibilities, obligations and commitments by developing countries, they are expressed in the most definitive way. On the question of the particular language used on that score, obviously, there was a fair bit of push back from various developing countries about that particular matter. These negotiations proceed on the basis of consensus.
What you have for the first time is definitive commitments on the part of developing countries. That is reflected in the body of the text. These will also be reflected in the schedules which will be used for developing countries. As to the final legal shape of the actual treaty arrangement itself, that will be unfolded during the course of negotiations between now and the next conference of the parties. You're right to say there was pushback on that, but I've got to say, in terms of the substance of the Copenhagen Accord, again, there is immeasurable progress on that score.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well there are two aspects to your question. One is, when will these schedules be completed by the developed and developing countries. That has been subject of some continuing discussion. The range of options tonight were by Christmas, except that it didn't leave a lot for the traditions of all concerned parties- we then moved to New Year, and then there was a discussion about the end of January. And I looked to the Minister for advice on that, and it's now the first of February. So that's where that stands.
On the second point about levels of ambition, our policy has been the same, all the way through. Australia will do no less and no more than the rest of the world, and that is our position. It always has been. It always will be. And that is why we'll wait 'til we see a pulling together of the aggregate commitments from the rest of the world. That is our policy, we think it's the right thing to do.
And I think having said that, and given the fact it's only quarter to two in the morning- which makes it what, quarter to eleven back home- might go out and have some lunch.
Thanks very much.